Welcome back - 2023 The Year of the Customer

I trust you had a restful festive season and returned refreshed and re-energised.

We managed to give our production staff a well-deserved break, which is a rarity in the animal feed industry.

I can therefor assure you that the entire Trouw Nutrition South Africa (TNSA) team is recharged and rearing to deliver on our promises of quality and service.

Looking back on 2022, it was a year of challenges:

• Covid was still with us in the first few months (hard to believe)
• Shipping constraints made life very difficult (but happily appears to return to normal)
• The Russia/Ukraine war which affected several raw materials (and this is still with us)
• The war also led to increases in fuel prices and input costs for us and our customers
• Harbour strikes with the concomitant supply chain delays….
• Disease outbreaks such as foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever
• And Eskom….

Many of these challenges will still be with us in 2023.

But there were promising signs too in recent weeks:

• The dairy and swine industries saw improvements in their commodity prices.
• Fuel prices are coming down.
• Port congestion is easing.
• Several of our raw material prices started declining.
• We had good summer rains at the start of the season and early forecasts predict another good maize harvest.
• We have seen some positive signs that our economy is recovering, and we haven’t seen the inflationary increases in SA as was experienced in most countries in Europe and the Americas.

So, I have a very bullish outlook on 2023.

What lies in store for TNSA in 2023?

• In our production units we are rolling out a global Operational Excellence program, where we expect significant improvements in our production efficiencies.
• This will also benefit you as customer in terms of improved service levels.
• You can also expect to see several new faces in TNSA – we are a growing business, and simultaneously our team is growing each month.
• We will continue expanding and upgrading our warehouses, following the recent purchase of the adjacent property.
• Most exciting: we will start building our new look offices – in a year from now you won’t recognize our site!

However, what we consider our priority for this year, is YOU, our CUSTOMERS!

Because 2023 will be our YEAR OF THE CUSTOMER.

In that light we are planning several events to be closer to you, our customer, where we can also share our expertise to help you help us “Feeding the future”.

I thank you again for your support and wish you all the very best for 2023.

Dankie vir julle ondersteuning – dit word waardeer, en ons sien uit na gemeenskaplike sukses in 2023.

With warmest regards

Theunis de Bruyn

January 2023